Genetic solutions for determining fibre quality traits in sugarcane

In the last few years, sugar cane varieties have been released that have caused milling problems. These “soft cane” varieties have fibre quality measurements that sit outside the normal range, and their “softness” can result in mill stoppages and revenue loss. Fibre quality measurement is labour intensive and time consuming and is therefore done in the later stages of the sugarcane breeding program. A relatively simple, high throughput screen for fibre quality could potentially be applied at an earlier stage to eliminate soft cane varieties earlier in the breeding program. This PhD project is comparing a set of genotypes with soft and normal fibre quality, with respect to anatomy (using microscopy and image analysis) and biochemical composition to look for traits linked to fibre quality, and will also use genetic analysis to identify any associations between existing Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) array data and fibre quality measurements.